Congratulations to Dr Richard Allen, Archivist and Records Manager at Magdalen College, Oxford, on the publication of his new book, The Aynho Cartulary and its Documentary Culture: Study, Text, and Translation, co-authored with Professor Benjamin Pohl from the University of Bristol. Richard and Ben held a book launch at Magdalen on Tuesday 4 March in the Old Library to celebrate the book’s publication.
This new book is the first full study of the thirteenth-century roll cartulary of the medieval hospital of SS James and John in Aynho, Northamptonshire, which was founded in 1170/1 to care for the local and itinerant sick-poor. Aynho Hospital was among those properties acquired by Magdalen’s founder, William Waynflete, and its archive, including the cartulary, was transferred to the college following the hospital’s closure in the fifteenth century.
A cartulary is a medieval manuscript containing copies of original documents relating to an institution’s foundation, privileges, and legal rights. They were produced by religious houses of every sort, and are therefore among the most common type of medieval administrative record. The Aynho Cartulary is unusual, however, in that it takes the form of a roll rather than a codex.
“Although we always knew it was going to be exciting to work with, the Aynho Cartulary proved even more interesting than we at first imagined”, said Richard. “In editing, studying, and translating this somewhat unassuming document, we have been able to situate the people and places it mentions in contexts that stretch well beyond Aynho’s immediate boundaries, from the world of the medieval tournament to the Scottish borders and the Low Countries.”
Despite being one of the earliest and best-preserved cartularies of its type in Britain and Ireland, very little has been written about the Aynho Cartulary given its rediscovery in the Magdalen Archives only as recently as 1979. In their new book, Richard and Benjamin shed light not just on the cartulary itself but on the scribal, social, and economic contexts that shaped it.
The book is published by Boydell Press as part of the Medieval Documentary Cultures series. Learn more